Blog

News, events, updates, and tidbits from the Presbyterian Historical Society. Use tags to read related articles or sort by author for similar posts written by PHS staff members and volunteers.

Project Verdad and the Presbyterian Border Ministry

October 24, 2024

***Harmful Content Alert: This story contains outdated and offensive language.***

For more than 50 years, the Presbyterians of Mexico and the United States have partnered in ministry in the US-Mexico border region. Navigating barriers of history, economics, and language, unearthing and redressing racism, church workers in the borderlands continue to labor in serviglesias—servant churches.

In the late 1960s, the towns of Mexico’s northern border rapidly industrialized, drawing millions of people to jobs in the maquiladoras. Cities...

Author:

David S

Tags:

Mexico, Chicano movement, Missions

RNS Digitization Project Update

October 10, 2024

We are back again to share some more updates from the Religious News Service Photographs Digitization Project.

During the third quarter of 2024, PHS was thrilled to welcome Lauren Pash to the team as our new RNS Project Archivist. Working alongside Megan, the two of them were busy appraising, rehousing, scanning, and describing historical RNS...

Author:

Allison

Tags:

Religious News Service, From the Archives, Digitization

New Oral Histories: Puerto Rico

October 8, 2024

This summer, PHS visited Puerto Rico to record oral histories with ten ordained women. Each participant was introduced to the Society by Rvda. Blanqui Otaño, the first woman ordained in Puerto Rico.

The video interviews, available in Pearl Digital Collections, are connected by each woman’s deeply Caribbean ministry. From Costa Rica to Venezuela, from the Dominican Republic to Nicaragua, their experiences with seminary, ordination, and their personal challenges and accomplishments have been documented and added to PHS’s collection of over 200 oral histories. Compelled by their faith,...

Author:

Kristen

Tags:

Presbyterian Heritage

Religious News Service Exhibit Report

October 8, 2024

In early 2024, the Presbyterian Historical Society was awarded a $94,750 grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc. to develop a traveling exhibit prototype of photographs from its Religious News Service Collection. The exhibit, Faith & Justice in the 1960s: Religious News Service Covers Civil Rights, provides a window into news coverage of the Civil Rights Movement from 1961 to 1965, illuminating some lesser-known stories of people of faith who fought for justice, transforming the United States.

The first venue for the exhibit prototype was the Religion News Service’s 90th...

Author:

Natalie

Tags:

Religious News Service, Presbyterian Heritage

Illuminating the Past: More Light Presbyterians Records

October 8, 2024

--by Nick Skaggs and David Staniunas

This Spring, PHS received 48 cubic feet of original More Light Presbyterians (MLP) records from Rutgers University Special Collections and Archives. The records, which date back to the organization’s founding in 1974 are now processed and accessible to the public for the first time.

What were the records of the chief grassroots LGBTQIA+ advocacy organization in the PC(USA) doing at Rutgers in the first place? At...

Author:

PHS Staff

Tags:

Presbyterian Heritage, LGBTQIA+ History, Archival Processing, Collections